ROLE OF CRISIS COMMUNICATION IN MANAGING STAKEHOLDERS’ PERCEPTIONS IN CORPORATE ORGANISATIONS IN KENYA: THE CASE OF KENYA TEA DEVELOPMENT AGENCY

ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between crisis communication and stakeholders’ perception in corporate organisation with Kenya Tea Development Agency as a case study. It investigated the communication approaches used by Kenya Tea Development Agency corporate affairs team to manage the perceptions of smallholder tea farmers towards the agency in 2014 when tea revenues dropped. The study evaluated the appropriateness of communication tactics used during the crisis and examined the effects of crisis communication on the behaviours of tea farmers. It also investigated the different dimensions of perceptions during the crisis. The study was guided by the stakeholder theory and the co-orientation model that were used to explain, predict, and understand the relationship between crisis communications and farmers’ perception. The study employed a mixed-methods approach of both quantitative and qualitative. It sampled 400 tea farmers from a population of 600,000 smallholder tea farmers spread across the 16 tea growing counties in Kenya. The research sites included Kisii, Muranga, Kirinyaga and Embu counties. The findings showed that the agency failed to communicate to farmers with speed, allowing the media to disseminate messages first, in a distorted, erroneous way. This heightened the crisis and injured the reputation of the agency, damaging its relationship and goodwill with tea farmers. The study also found out that during the pre-crisis and post-crisis stages, the agency did little to engage tea farmers. The agency only became active during the crisis itself when it employed several communication tactics to relay profit warning messages to tea farmers. Even then, most of the channels of communications used were one-way: from the agency to tea farmers. The study further found out that some tea farmers already had major negative perceptions – emanating from past unresolved issues – before the crisis erupted. The study also found that there are two types of perceptions: micro and macro. These two categories of perceptions, however, call for further investigations to examine how they are formed and how they affect the relationship between organisations and their stakeholders. The study concluded that Kenya Tea Development Agency should have been more strategic in its communication during the 2014 crisis to influence farmers’ perception and consequently their behaviours. That way, the agency could have come out of the crisis with few damages and not a total harm. To reduce reputational damages while influencing the perceptions of stakeholders, the agency should have acted with speed using appropriate communication channels - paid, earned, shared or owned - at all the stages of the crisis: pre-crisis, crisis response and post-crisis. Also, the agency should have constantly engaged tea farmers to build goodwill and foster a mutual relationship. The study recommended that the agency’s corporate affairs team should frequently communicate with tea farmers, using appropriate channels, throughout any crisis to foster a good working relationship and to safeguard the tea industry that is the mainstay of Kenya’s economy. The agency, and in deed other organisations, must also strive to build its relationship with the media by prioritising their requests and organising regular briefs. Admittedly, the media has no equal and is the reporter of the high court of public opinion.